Eclipse CD5000 Question...

[Lspade 10+ year member]

I was wondering about the time alignment on this HU. Does the time alignment feature actually help? I heard that it was so simply to use that it lacked in the actual time aligning capabilities?

Thanks guys.

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[headless 10+ year member]

As far as i am aware, the CD5000 has no time alignment capabilities; that is reserved to it's bigger brother, the CD7000. Eclipse's web site appears to confirm this by saying the 5100 does not have time alignment whereas the 7100 does.

 

[Geezerpoop 10+ year member]

the time alignment on the cd5000 is just a bunch of presets. Front, Front-Left, Front-Right, Rear, and so on. You can basically accomplish these presets by using the fade and balance.

 

[headless 10+ year member]

Time alignment is not the same thing as using fade and balance...fade and balance only effects volume. Granted, you can modify volume levels on a per channel basis on the time alignment screen on the CD7000...but you can also adjust the time alignment in tenths of a millisecond, which you can't do on the CD5000. Perhaps the menu on the CD5000 is labelled time alignment too, even though the only options for it are for adjusting volume levels? That would explain the confusion.

 

[talibmohamid 10+ year member]

The Cd5000 Does Have Time Alignment, Just Kinda Tricky To Tweak, The Cd 5000 Isn't The Highest In Deck They Had In 06's But Is Does Have 8v Pre-outs In Comparison To The Cd7000's 5v......even Though You May Be Able To Tweak It To The Miliseconds With The Cd7000, Unless You Are In Sq Comp.s, Dude You Won't Here It, But I Can Guarentee U That You Would Here The Difference In The Signal.....

 

[headless 10+ year member]

What? How exactly do you adjust time alignment on the cd5000 and why does eclipse say there is none present if that feature does exist (assuming the 5100 has the same featureset as the 5000, their web site indicates no for time alignment)? Perhaps they have a pre-set for 'the average sized sedan' or some such, but the deck, according to everything i can find about it, does not have configurable time alignment which is essential.

Time alignment makes considerably more of a difference in the sound of your system than pre-out voltage. You don't even see near 8v through those pre-outs anyway unless you're testing at max volume with a test tone. I don't listen to test tones, but i do listen to music which is greatly effected by time alignment. Adjusting the volume of one of your speakers is not time alignment, that's just volume matching.

Edit: i found a spec/feature list from eclipse's australian site that does say the CD5000 has 'simplified' time alignment in 'advanced mode'. Upon further research, it looks like the above possibility is true; they have pre-set time delays based on the 'average' car.

In my experience, adjusting even by only a couple of tenths of a millisecond in my car makes a considerable difference in the centerpoint of the sound stage; i don't think time alignment would be very useful in a 'pre-canned' form unless you got extremely lucky and your car fit their concept perfectly.

 

[talibmohamid 10+ year member]

I'm with you all the way dude... not here to start an arguement.....feel me / do you sale eclipse? I work at a store that does and I have had both of the deck...and I do understand what time alignment is / so are you sayin that there no different in 8v and 5v? it is, you may not see 8v but you could tell a differenct once the decks are tweaked out, MAYBE, depending on you amp and speaker set up........Correct me if I'm wrong, "headless" (headless - says "you won't see no were near 8v" - talibmohamid "but you will see more than the 7000", do you agree?

"Pre-Outs that have higher resolution than lower voltage pre-outs, translate to a cleaner, more detailed signal at the amplifier input stage for a cleaner audio reproduction. "

-TIMEALIGN is great, but I hope this guy has an awsome speaker and amp set up if he's really going to be able to here it- what you think headless / another question is what kinda vehicle does he have....

(Sorry about the deck mix-up), my fault.........cd5000 doesn't have the time alignment) (headless), I had my stuff srewed UP!!!!

 

[headless 10+ year member]

Heylo talib - no, i don't sell eclipse hardware...but every deck i've owned has been an Eclipse deck //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif Cd1001 (circa 1992! touch screen and DSP old school style hehe) to cd8051 to cd8454 to cd7000 - My current deck is the CD7000 with only 5v pre-outs according to eclipse. When i installed it, i didn't adjust my amplifier gains and didn't see any loss in volume when compared to my 8v pre-out CD8051, or my 8v preout CD8454. Also, the CD7000 sounds to my ear as good as either of my previous 8v pre-out decks, which is to say it sounds great and doesn't clip even at high volumes.

Because of my experiences, i tend towards the school of thought that the 8v pre-outs are more important from a marketting standpoint than from a performance standpoint. To add weight to this theory, there are many fairly high end decks out there that sound as good and better than the Eclipse decks i've heard, and THEY use 4v, 5v pre-outs (Clarion DRZ 9255 for example..4v). I don't have the equipment to test voltage output at the pre-outs and haven't felt like doing so to compare the two decks...but taking into consideration that my gains didn't even have to be adjusted, i tend to think that under normal conditions, the 8v preouts will likely not be putting out any higher voltage than the 5v ones. Most amplifiers reach their maximum power @ 2v to 4v anyway....heck, my eclipse EA3422 could reach it's full power with only .2v and it was a nice and clean amp (my 4150 XXK has a higher noise floor by far). From my reading of other peoples' tests, just about all decks regardless as to preout voltage generate under 1volt at reasonable volumes when playing normal music.

You don't need an amazing speaker system to hear the benefits of time alignment. It makes a huge difference, even with stock crappy speakers. How do i know? I tried it with my camry's stock shitbox speakers before i installed my germaniums //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif It makes a big difference in any situation where your speakers are considerably farther from your ears than eachother.